His Trouble Maker

Chapter 97

JESSICA

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. Or how long I’m going to pretend I still am.

I shift my weight a little and my body screams. Something in my thigh burns under the bandage–ripped open, re–stitched. I don’t even remember how it happened. I remember teeth. Snapping. Blood. My own voice, feral and not mine.

I close my eyes again, just for a second, just to stop the room from spinning.

It doesn’t help.

The cabin is warm but unfamiliar. Too quiet. Wooden walls, patchy light from the fireplace, no windows big enough to see the sky. It smells like ash, antiseptic, and something vaguely sweet–like apples that are trying too hard. I catalog everything automatically. Where are the exits? How many seconds would it take me to crawl if he-

No. No, stop.

He’s not going to hurt you.

Not this time.

The clatter of the spoon jolts me. I flinch. Subtle, but not enough to go unnoticed. Grayson’s head snaps up. He looks at me, and the second our eyes meet I regret it.

“Y–You’re awake.”

I blink once. That’s the only answer I give him.

He moves like he’s going to come closer. I tense, and he stops.

I try to sit up and immediately regret it. Pain lances through my leg. The bandage pulls. My breath hitches and I hear it, the scrape of the chair legs behind him as he turns around again, fast.

“You’re not supposed to move too fast,” he says, soft.

“I’m fine.” It comes out more like a cough.

“You’re not. His eyes flick to my thigh, to the soaked through edge of the bandage. “You tore the stitches again.”

Of course I did.

Do you want help sitting up?”

I don’t answer. But he wants. He always waits. So I nod, barely, and his hand slips behind my back

flex kam help me up, and hate how good it feels just to lean on something solid How easy it would be to fall back into him, to forget. To prefund is okay between the two of us

the pillow befund

I’ve cooked something he says more then

don’t need anything from him. But my stomach answers before I can, bwisting hard with that hollow, asidic

of the Westwood pack prepare a meal for me turns out to be a great chaotic joke it throw but nothing

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09:40 Tue, 26 Aug

Chapter 97

going to be normal

bowl. It was

how can we

turns around, I give him a small smile as if I’m not mourning in my head. He looks at me like he’s still trying to figure

have

63%

+38)

Wordless. Me pretending my bones aren’t still vibrating from what I did. Him

together.

Someone else was here.

hell is he doing here?” I snapped–no, snarled–my

Tra

thinking, blood thundering in my ears, my limbs dragging pain behind them. I didn’t care. I could already feel the

rip his smug face

has the nerve to

the air. “Didn’t expect to see you on your feet so

Sweetheart.

my bones. He stumbles, but that damned

he mutters,

gut you,

voice is

me, but it’s distant. Doesn’t

him against the wall so hard the cabin shudders. His head thuds against the

face, breath coming in short, fractured gasps. “You think I don’t know what you did? What you left me

again, this time quieter. “You’re going to have to

his throat. “Say one more

I’m shaking

hand lands on my arm–light,

I snap.

on him, shoving him back hard enough he stumbles